Matrox DualHead2Go Digital SE Review

Demand Multimon

Today’s laptop computers can be a serious replacement for a desktop setup. They can feature fast multi-core processors and professional video cards that desktop PCs do, and they are much more portable. One nagging problem with a lot of laptops are their issues when connecting to multiple displays. Most road warriors that use a laptop pretty much just connect a mirrored display when doing presentations, but a programmer or graphics designer really needs at least three displays to work efficiently.

Not all laptops even support triple displays, even though they may feature a DisplayPort interface, and this is especially true with notebooks that utilize integrated Intel HD graphics. I know several developers that have company-provided notebook comptuers that cannot use more than one attached display, and are limited to dual-monitor mode. The only way to get around this is to attach a USB display adapter, which requires additional CPU power and can slow things down.

One of the better solutions to this problem is to use the Matrox DualHead2Go Digital SE adapter. This hardware is connected externally to any laptop that has a DisplayPort interface, and enables a multi-monitor desktop up to three monitors wide with a desktop resolution of 5760×1200 when coupled with your laptop’s display.

There are some caveats to what you can do with this device, and we go over them in this review.